The primary purpose of the project is to assess the relevance of certain aspects of child development research to applied clinical child psychology. Three parenting techniques are examined (positive reinforcemient, ignoring, and time-out) to see whether they are differentially effective depending upon the age of the child and the use of verbal rationale and/or behavioral rehearsal procedures with the child. Each study examines the contributions of age of the child (3 to 4 years old versus 5 to 7 years old) and type of instruction to the child (basic skill training of the parent, skill training plus verbal rationale, skill training plus verbal rationale and behavioral rehearsal, or control) for a particular parenting technique. Fifty-six mother child pairs are recruited for each study. A pretraining and posttraining observation session takes place in a laboratory playroom. Dependent measures include both behavioral observation and social validity data. The observational measures of child behavior focus on child compliance and noncompliance to maternal commands. A Parental Satisfaction Questionnaire is administered to determine if the parent is satisfied with the particular method of training received.